ALTA 2014 Mini-review #1: Women Taking Initiative

One of the best parts of my year is the annual ALTA conference, which took place last week in Milwaukee. And one of the best parts of this particular year's conference was the chance to moderate my first roundtable, which had a very fun name, if I do say so myself: "Taking the Initiative: How to Get Involved, Get Results, and Make Friends Along the Way." I gathered a group of translators I admire who have all started very interesting things, and I asked them to describe the process:

• what they saw lacking in our industry
• how they decided to fill the gap
• what made them decide to take action, instead of waiting for someone else to do it
• what problems they encountered along the way, and how they overcame them

We got some fascinating stories and practical advice out of it.

• Lisa Carter talked about developing her own freelancing into Intralingo, her small business with courses for literary translators
• Esther Allen talked about lots of translation initiatives within PEN America, including Michael Henry Heim's amazing donation to fund the PEN/Heim translation grants
• Olivia Sears talked about how the Center for the Art of Translation was started over twenty years ago, and how the translation landscape has changed in the meantime
• Erica Mena talked about starting the Anomalous Journal (and eventually Press) out of her own apartment, and the challenges and freedoms of not being a non-profit organization
• Susan Bernofsky talked about how her incredibly useful blog Translationista was started, as well as some other advocacy work she does to fill the voids
• I also talked a little about how ELTNA was started, and is continuing to evolve (on the anniversary of its creation)

Notice anything about that list? It's all women.

Now, I didn't plan the panel this way. Initially, I thought about people who had dreamed up some really cool stuff, and asked them if they'd like to come talk about it. And there was one male on my list, but he wasn't able to attend the conference this year. At any rate, about a month out from the conference, I suddenly realized that the people on my roundtable email list were all women.

Erica noticed it, too, and commented on both the panel's makeup and the fact that about 3/4 of our audience interested in hearing these stories were also women. She posited that maybe women start these things--especially if the things involved volunteering or working for free--because women are generally more giving and maternal. (Yes, we're going to be dealing with major stereotypes here. Roll with it for now.) But ALTA was founded by men, and men currently occupy the president, vice president, and past president positions on the board. That's a lot of volunteer work.

Maybe it's just that there are more women translators than men, or at least more who attend the ALTA conference and could thus be said to be involved somehow. (A quick count of participant bios show that approximately 155 women presented or read at this conference, out of approximately 252 total participants--that's over 60% women.) Or perhaps it's that I'm female, and so I'm more naturally drawn toward working or talking with other women.

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that men operate more within the existing parameters of leadership to take charge, whereas women find typical leadership roles harder to access, so they just make their own. (This is a hypothesis. I told you there'd be some grossly overgeneralizing stereotypes.) (Also, to clarify, this doesn't actually hold water with ALTA: although the "top three" board positions are held by men, there's actually a female majority on the board, plus our female managing director.)

Basically, what I think I'm trying to say is, there are a lot of possible correlations here, and even more possible causes behind it. And we're getting into slippery statistical territory. Correlation does not imply causation.

Anyway.

To get back to the original topic, the roundtable was fascinating, even for those involved. Every last one of us has our notepads out and were scribbling furiously. We talked a lot about connections and reactions, how one essay can spark someone else to get in touch and do something, how the question to ask is "why not?" instead of listing all possible excuses for getting something done, and how sometimes you just have JDIs: Just Do Its. (I did apologize for the acronym-speak, but my husband's an engineer.) There was also a fascinating discussion of how more established organizations actually find it harder to drum up interest in their programs and new initiatives--CAT and ALTA being two examples--because people think they already know what the organizations are.

And on that note, if you'd like to get involved with an existing thing or have a brilliant idea for something new, come talk to me. Or talk to the appropriate person. Someone. Anyone. Literary translation, much like life, depends on fun new things being formed and developed all the time.

Want to learn more?

Literary translation is a funny industry. On the one hand, it's extremely academic, with many literary translators doing their translation on the side as they hold down day jobs as professors of language, writing, or maybe possibly (and more often, these days, thankfully) translation. On the other hand, you don't actually need any credentials to get your first job--you just need to know the right people and be able to write well. Higher education is certainly not a requirement for the field.

But if you're like me, you do want go back for that master's degree, learn more, talk to more people, gain more experience. And there's a fantastic program specifically for French to English translators that just opened up applications for the 2015-2016 academic year.

NYU's MA Program in Literary Translation
http://french.as.nyu.edu/object/french.1315.grad.progreq.ma.translation

This is the program I would have done if I hadn't left NYC right when I started looking for master's programs. Run by the indomitable Emmanuelle Ertel, it's a year-long program based in New York City and Paris, two of the greatest cities for publishing. Knowing the right people can be all about location, location, and who you know already. Emmanuelle knows many people.

Plus, there are the courses themselves. I did my undergrad in French at NYU and can vouch for the amazing courses offered.

If you're interested in the program, there's even more info out there! The students of the last few years have created a blog of their studies:  http://frenchandthecitynyu.wordpress.com/ Plus, there's a Facebook page, which lists a lot of events that the students are involved with in NYC.

Go check them out. I promise it'll be worth your while.

Wine and Books

They go really well together.

Kidding. Well, not actually kidding at all. But that's not what this is about.

So, more specifically: book reviews and wine descriptions. They're starting to get scarily similar.

No, I haven't started reading about "hints of oak" or "overtones of caramel" in book reviews. But you know the thing about wine descriptions: there are a select few people in this world whose palates are trained enough to be able to pick out those notes of plum or dark chocolate without being prompted. For the rest of the world, there's just a simple difference between good wines and bad wines. And for the most part, it's all completely subjective. Your own tastes determine whether a wine is good or bad to you, whether you'll enjoy it or not. There are a few wines that pretty much everyone agrees are universally good, but even there, everyone may have a different reason for drinking it.

The more book reviews I read, the more I think that books are just the same as wine. There are lots of good books out there, and lots of not-so-good ones. But move beyond that almost-universal dichotomy, even ever so slightly, and it suddenly becomes a matter of personal taste. I think Perec and the Oulipo crowd are fascinating; other people can't get over the craziness. On the flip side, I really appreciate the widely-acclaimed Maidenhair, but I still haven't managed to finish it.

I read a book for a class last spring that I thought was . . . fine.* I thought the book had some pretty ambitious and admirable goals, but that it didn't really achieve many of them. But there are other reviews out there, other readers who think the book was amazing. They've used words like "vibrancy" and "liveliness" to describe the author's writing. They speak of an "authenticity" in the retelling that I didn't see. They describe the "impassioned" and "arresting" story, which are very present emotions that I didn't feel.

I know book reviews can be extremely subjective, but there's also a rather large element of authority that we ascribe to many book reviewers. It's the same kind of trust we place in sommeliers and winegrowers, the ones who know the terroir, who know the kind of volcanic soil in Sicily that give this particular wine its peat-moss quality, the lack of rain in the third week of August in 2003 that causes the elevated sweetness of that particular Riesling, the bourbon barrels that age one of California's Cab Sauvs in a specific way. They know things, so we trust them.

But if you can't taste the peach, does that mean you're a bad wine drinker? If you don't feel "arrested" by the story, does that make you a bad reader?

No. Of course not. The beauty of humankind's variety, all our wide-ranging tastes, and all that. Personal preference will always have some sort of effect on our judgment of subjective artistic endeavors, whether experienced over our palate or through our brain. As long as you can explain why something didn't mesh with your tastes--in an intelligent fashion, without making personal attacks--your opinion is just as valid as any reviewer's.

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*This has no bearing on the author, whom I met--I think this person is pretty fabulous and a great speaker. I'm also purposefully not giving enough information to identify either the work or the author, since this is not about my personal experience with the book, but rather just looking at the general subjectivity of literary enjoyment.

Ebola? No problem. Go to Madagascar.

You know those games where you're a supervirus? And you try to wipe out the human race? There's one for the computer called "Pandemic 2," and you can customize your symptoms, transmission, everything. It's fun.

But you only win if you actually kill every single last human. And there's usually one problem: Madagascar. It's an island, and they're smart there. If you don't start there, you'll never get in.

It makes for good party conversation.

As it turns out, however, life might be imitating art here, too.

At the end of August, there was a Russian cargo ship that was trying to dock in Tamatave (Toamasina), Madagascar's major port on the eastern coast of the island. Problem was, the ship had made a stop in Liberia just before that. Read: EBOLA SCARE. So the Malagasy officials didn't let them dock. The ship sat there, just off-shore, until the proper quarantine period had passed. So Madagascar might actually be the safest place in the world if a global pandemic breaks out, even in real life.

If you can get in.

How?

How can I tell the story of this place?

Its red soil that browns the skin better than any sunshine tan. The sky so large it circles the globe and comes back around to wave from behind, the same huge sky. The backyards and courtyards that do more than double-duty, as gardens and pet spaces and toilets and trash heaps and places to relax in the evening. The taxis that might be the most trustworthy means of transport, if you can pay the cost. The forever flickering lights, the water supply that may or may not be cut on any given day. The . . .

The list is too long.

How to tell the story of an entire country, an entire people, in one short story, when no stories yet exist in English? Or very few.*

How not to feel helpless, in the face of some who need everything, but most need little outside help? Just some mosquito nets for the tourists, really.

Just outside of this city is a paradise, as there is just outside any city, if you travel far enough. And here as anywhere, there are city children who have never seen the countryside, and country children who have never been to the city.

Here, as anywhere, the goal of education is to show our children just how great and wide and grand our world is, so that they can do anything they want, go anywhere they like, and treat all peoples of the world with respect. Even--especially--their own eventual children, biological or otherwise. But how is this any way to raise children? Without shoes even for church, without a school within walking distance, without any other source of heat but the hearth in the bedroom/kitchen?

How is this acceptable for us? How does the world feed such a vicious cycle? What are these people, whose only task is to survive? And what are we to them? We, who have the means to evolve beyond, to progress further? Us, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I? Everyone must be responsible for themselves, yes. But without a bit of care for everything and everyone else on this globe, how can we ever survive?

And yet, where do you draw the line between an excess of charity and keeping yourself afloat?

What to do in this strange and fascinating and fantastic country, where the flies buzz around your dinner in anticipation of you?

*Note: the "few" is this: Voices from Madagascar, a wonderful anthology with bilingual French/English text on facing pages. It's a good start, but it was published over a decade ago by a university press and is now, for all intents and purposes, out of print.

Let's talk about taxis-brousse and taxis-be

These things:

From the Canal blog

Well, that, except much more crowded. And without the little eyes on the front. And not a cartoon.

So, more like this:

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A trip to the countryside with a humanitarian organization in Antananarivo

Taxis-be (public transportation in the city; "be" means "big" in Malagasy) and taxis-brousse (long-distance regional or national travel) are gigantic vans, most that can fit upwards of 30 people if they squeeze in tightly enough (which they all do). Every single one is old, clanky, and practically falling apart. In Antananarivo, the drivers all obey the unwritten rules of the road, where there are no stoplights, few street signs, and a very confusing system of right of way. The "conductors" who take the fare tend to hang outside of the van's doors as it starts driving, closing the door from the inside halfway down the road. Oh, and the fare is . . . unknown? Known only to the locals? Definitely not written down anywhere. All in cash, too, so vazahas (foreigners) could easily just hand over some random bill and be taken advantage of. And in the above style of taxi-be, there's usually planks of wood that the driver passes back for people to sit down in the aisles when it gets crowded.

And it always gets crowded.

I'm very very very glad that I'm so short for an American. At nearly 5'3", I'm of average height for a Malagasy -- and I just barely fit in the seats. My knees tend to knock against the bare metal of the seatback in front of me, sometimes a bit painfully.

Basically, a taxi-be should be the most terrifying experience in the world. Nothing about it says "comfort" or "safety" or "the better way to travel," not by a long shot. It's loud and crowded and utterly unsafe.

And yet.

(There's always that "and yet.")

It's just how things are here. Everyone takes taxis-be, from poor to rich (unless they travel with bodyguards). The lack of personal space is normal, not uncomfortable. The drivers know exactly what they're doing, and how to thread their way in between alien-seeming traffic patterns. There's not enough space in Tana for anyone to drive fast enough for seatbelts to be necessary. Everyone pitches in to pass money back to the conductor, who will always give you the right change. They'll answer any questions you have, too (although mostly in Malagasy).

This is the culture, these are the norms, and just stop looking at things through your Western goggles now, won't you? It's hard, I know. It's hard for me, too. But not everything that's different from what we know needs fixing. Welcome to the other side of the world.

Manao ahoana!

That's how you greet someone in Malagasy. But, like many languages, they tend to smoosh some of their sounds together, and they drop the last vowel of every word like it's their job. So it's really pronounced more like "Manaoon!" Yes, with the exclamation point -- Malagasy is a very sung language.

In addition, as it turns out, Malagasy has more English influences than French. No one's sure of exactly why, but the British did definitely have an earlier presence on the island. Maybe that explains the fact that they pronounce their months almost exactly like us, even if the spelling is pretty different.

Also, the Malagasy alphabet only has twenty-two letters. They dropped the unnecessary ones, as they say:

• C can be replaced with either K or S
• U is out, because their O already makes the long "u" sound
• W can be replaced by their O, as well
• Q is just dumb

(That is, verbatim, what I was told about Q.)

MICROFORM!

As everyone can probably intuit from my lengthy silence, I'd been working on my thesis translation full-time for the last few months. It went well, but it put me into a little bit of a hermit-bubble. I guess I did get to go to my brother's graduation in NC in May, and I made time to go out swing dancing every so often . . . but on the other hand, at least twelve weeks' worth of PW, Weekend Reads, and publishers' updates went straight into my trash. And this blog didn't fare much better, either. Sorry about that.

But I come up from the murky depths of translation hermitage with a new story to share: as part of my research, I learned how to use a microform machine! It's been over a decade since I first saw one of those ancient machines sitting in the musty, dimly lit, extremely stereotypical newspaper reading room of my childhood library, and I hadn't had any valid research reason to try it out until now.

Guys. Gals. People. It's SO COOL.

I go nuts over organization. I also love things that work. Old, simple machines that are very good at what they do. Microfilm and microfiche should be completely obsolete forms of information storage by now, but they're not. Yes, the Internet and electronic databases are usurping many of the microform machine's uses (e.g. newspapers' archives are all held online now), but that doesn't mean that microfilm is dying. Oh no. Instead of just being an obsolete form of research, which some university libraries keep around only for that one tenured professor that won't leave, microfilm is actually acting as a hard-copy backup to many of the online journals we know and love! Useful AND fascinating!

Seriously. Fascinating. I mean, look at this thing:

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IT'S SO PRETTY!

And it plays this thing:

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Tiny, man.

AND this!

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(All images from Wikimedia Commons.)

I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is microfilm and which is microfiche. (Hint: fiche is French for something . . . )

I'm getting a little smitten, I think. It's actually gotten to the point where I'm trying to make up specific enough research questions that it would warrant a trip to the microform machine. It's fine, though. I can stop anytime I want. Really, officer.

Well, aren't you a tall drink of water in this lonely desert.

Why hello, dear readers. It's been a while. Life happened, of course.

But in the interim, I have written a thesis! Or, almost. Hello, 1 a.m., my faithful friend. You and I will be very close until deadline on the 31st.

Here's more news. You wanted that, right?

I'm going to Madagascar!

Yes, the island.

Yes, from the movie.

No, there will not be any penguins. There will be lemurs, though.

And I'm leaving a week from today. Well, technically from yesterday.

More to come soon when my brain resolidifies from the mush it has become. Until then, I'll leave you with this thought, from the exceptional documentary, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi":

Once you decide on your occupation . . . you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success . . . and is the key to being regarded honorably.

My friends. Dear readers. I love my work.

Babelcube: How About Them Apples?

Emma, this one's for you. I started responding to your comment on the last post, but it spiraled into much grander (and longer) territory.

I've heard quite a bit of chatter about Babelcube, a service that lets authors hire translators directly, over the past several months, so it's high time that I went to check it all out for myself. My findings are as follows.

Babelcube is like a worm-eaten apple: glistening, healthy skin on the outside, with one little hole that leads to a rotten core.

Problem #1: Authors pay nothing for the translation of their book. That's great for the authors, but pretty bad for the rest of the world, considering translation is a service that demands appropriate payment.

This means that there is no upfront payment for translators. In fact, no payment is guaranteed at all. The entire work is done on spec. I have a colleague who explained to me his opinion that spec work should always be done for works from classic, well-known authors. As he says, "At least one of you should have a recognizable name."

Problem #2: Translators don't even get to read the whole book before bidding for it. They just get a sample, on the basis of which they might get selected and sign a contract. That's slightly terrifying.

Problem #3: Payment is based on royalties. Now, on the surface, this is actually a fine idea: why not let translators be held somewhat accountable for the sales of their book, similar to the way authors are? Now, this only works, of course, if the translator gets paid a fair wage for their work in advance, but let's set that aside for the moment.

The division of royalties is actually pretty okay -- at least at the beginning. It starts at a lovely 55% for the translator for the first $2,000 of net sales revenue, but then drops pretty sharply from there. So total, for the first $8,000 of net sales, the translator gets $2,900 (Babelcube has this figure right on their revenue share page). And while that's a fine number, let's assume that the book was a pretty slim novel at 50,000 words. That's a whopping 5.8 cents per word. Ouch. And after that, it gets even harder for translators to earn any money -- only 10% of net sales after the first $8K.

I don't want to completely rag on Babelcube, because they are ostensibly doing the world a service by getting more literature out there in more languages. And honestly, this type of setup is extremely attractive for self-published authors. The author has to be the rights holder, which usually only happens for self-published works. (Tangential hilarity: there's a clause in the contract which states that the rights holder must affirm that "the Book is currently sold by Amazon." Hahahahahaha.) But if we are in the realm of self-publishing, then the book is probably going to be priced much lower than traditionally published books: $4.99, $1.99, or even 99 cents. How many copies would have to sell for translators to even dream of that first $2,900 in payment?

BUT! But but but. Here's the biggest Problem of them all: a lack of accountability, a lack of ability to really know what's going on with your work. Now, authors are rarely able to read their own book in translation. One Greek author recently marveled to me how she wasn't even able to recognize her own name on the cover of a Russian translation, which is a fair point (and also highly amusing). But there's usually a more-or-less official set of checks and balances built into the translation process. Specifically, for example, when an English book gets picked up for translation into German, there's a German publisher at the other end who engages the translator and edits the translation. They make sure that the work is polished and presentable in German, even though the original English author speaks not a lick of German. At Babelcube, though, the authors themselves are asked to sign off on the first ten pages of the translation, and then again to accept the final finished copy. How in all the nine hells are they supposed to do that with any sort of reliability? Babelcube actually suggests the following to authors: "if you don't speak the destination language, you may have a friend who can help." Gee, thanks.

And for translators, the guidelines for the authors to accept the translation are a bit murky, as well. Babelcube offers themselves as an arbitrator if necessary, but it would still be pretty easy for the author to give the translator the runaround. Even if the translation was forced to be accepted, the author could "decline" to promote the new translation at all. If no one can find it, no one can buy it, and the translator doesn't get paid. (Not to mention that the translator could screw the author over in a very similar way. The difference is that the author doesn't have any money or unpaid time at stake.) Besides, this is one of those awful "work-for-hire" situations. Sure, you're paid royalties on this one, but that doesn't outweigh the fact that you don't hold any rights to your own work. Sigh.

Realistically speaking, the risk is very high for everyone. I would say that it's too high. And granted, for the translator, this seems like one of those opportunities that gets you experience and exposure early on in your career, as well as that all-important line on your CV. For some people, this is exactly what they need. Heaven knows I had my own terrible experience at the beginning of my career. I regret the outcome (and the payment, egads), but I can't regret the experience it gave me, and what it taught me NOT to do.

All I'm saying is that Babelcube looks like a very easy way to get a translated book under your belt, which could be really great. Just don't spend all of your time there.

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Emma, I'd be extremely interested to hear what you think, as someone who's working with Babelcube. Are you happy with how you're getting paid? Did you have a good experience with your author? Any logistical snafus with the site itself?

If you found this post helpful, you can buy me a tea (although it might say “coffee”).